“”These vendetta's that you are pursuing are a large part of the reason why you can no longer participate at Wikiversity. @Abd: your wv user talk page is now locked. You no longer have an "agenda" to pursue at Wikiversity. Please stop wasting everyone's time.

Abd ul-Rahman Lomax[2][3] (a.k.a. Dennis George Lomax or User:Abd) is an American Muslim, conspiracy theorist, cyber-harasser and internet troll who is best known as proponent of pseudoscientific cold fusion. Lomax has a history of being banned on forums and wikis for disruption, trolling and posting of personal information of other users; disgruntled he then uses his blog to attack his forum debate opponents or admins who banned him; he likes to 'weaponize' Google searches, so if someone searches a name — his blog will show up with ad hominem and smears written about them. After blocked from RationalWiki and Wikipedia, Lomax wrote thousands of words on his blog about his bans, continuing to attack more editors. In December 2017, Lomax was permanently blocked on Wikiversity for long-term disruption and misusing the site for his personal-vendettas to harass other users.[4]

Education

Lomax claims to have studied undergraduate physics at the California Institute of Technology; he has no degree. He admits he never "graduated from any college or university."[2][6] However, he writes on websites he attended Cal Tech lectures, studying with Richard Feynman (1961-1963), further that he has knowledge of physics.[7][8][9][10] He also claims to have taken Linus Pauling's freshman chemistry class.[3] Despite, or perhaps because of this, Lomax has previously asserted that formal teachings are unnecessary for him, because he is able to "learn by writing".[11]

Religious views

Islam

Lomax converted to Islam in 1970[12][3] and claims to have "become a leader of a spiritual community"[13] as a successor to a popular mystic Sufi named Samuel L. Lewis. During 1978-1979 Lomax associated with Abdalqadir as-Sufi, Islamic founder of the Murabitun World Movement. He was asked to leave the group, later describing it as a "shady cult".[14][15][16]

Numeric miracles in the Quar'an

Lomax does not deny the possibility of miracles but has disputed the claims of Rashad Khalifa regarding numeric miracles in the Qur'an.[17][18]

Concerning Khalifa, Lomax has written:

"Dr. Khalifa’s claims, at best, fall into the category of pious fraud. … Had God intended the Qur'an to carry a code verifying its perfect preservation, he could have done it much more effectively and simply than the complex, arbitrary, and inconclusive 'code' claimed by Dr. Khalifa.[19]

He was also involved in a long internet debate with Edip Yuksel on numeric miracles in the Quar'an. The debate was printed in book format in 1995 and republished in 2012.[20] According to critics, Lomax is notorious for ad hominem.[21]

Pseudoscience

Cold fusion

Lomax is the owner of the pseudoscientific "Infusion Institute" which he formed in December, 2013.[23] It is not a recognized scientific institute, he is the only member. In 2015, he wrote a paper arguing for cold fusion that was published in the peer-reviewed journal Current Science.[24][25]

According to Lomax:

Cold fusion is real, and it is time that serious work is funded to study the conditions of cold fusion and other correlated effects, gathering the evidence needed to understand it.[26]

At least one news report has incorrectly described Lomax as a "physicist".[27] Lomax has made a number of far-fetched claims, for example he has stated that with further development "cold fusion could supply clean power for humanity indefinitely."[28]

Lomax is the owner of Lomax Design Associates, now based in Northampton, Massachusetts. In 2011 he gave a presentation at the pseudoscientific Cold Fusion/Lattice-Assisted Nuclear Reactions Colloquium at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.[29]

Parapsychology

Lomax is supportive of research in parapsychology but claims he is not a "believer" in the subject. He has argued against skeptics who dismiss parapsychology as pseudoscientific and refers to skeptics of parapsychology as "pseudoskeptics".[30][31] Lomax argues that:

Lomax holds personal grudges against users he has argued with on forums and wikis. He then doxes these users names and posts defamatory and personal information about them on his blog. Notably, Lomax calls anyone who disagrees with him a "liar", indeed, no matter how many times he is blocked, everyone is wrong and he is always right.Do You Believe That?

Wikipedia

In 2009, Lomax was topic banned from editing the Wikipedia cold fusion article for "disruptive editing". Two years later he was community banned and received an indefinite block.[38][39] He has attacked Wikipedia admins such as JzG and obsessively written over 20,000 words on his community ban.[40]

Lomax was also caught sock-puppeting on Wikipedia to promote cold fusion pseudoscience. In 2011, he was permanently blocked on an account called EnergyNeutral.[41] In total, he was blocked 13 times on Wikipedia between 2007 and 2011. Two of these blocks were for attacking other editors.[42]

Lomax has a problem with skeptics who edit Wikipedia. On October 4, 2017 he attacked a skeptical Wikipedia user "JPS" on his blog and posted personal information about this user.[43] Similarly, he joined the Thunderbolts woo forum to complain that astronomer Joshua P. Schroeder (JPS) is a "pseudoskeptic".[44] A few days later, Lomax created a new article on JPS that monitors his Wikipedia edits on cold fusion. He later deleted these articles.[45] JPS wrote on Wikiversity that Lomax had sent him "harassing" emails.[46] In response, he has called JPS a liar, claiming the emails contain no harassment.[47]

Two other Wikipedia users that Lomax has attacked are "AngloPyramidologist" and "Dan Skeptic", who he claims are two brothers that have inserted skeptical content onto Wikipedia articles on hundreds of accounts. Lomax has 12 obsessive articles dedicated to stalking these supposed brothers.[48] He speculates they may be working for a skeptical group such as Guerrilla Skepticism on Wikipedia.[49]

He also has a problem with a prominent skeptic and Wikipedia editor Tim Farley, who he describes as an "opinionated blowhard, like too many fake skeptics."[50]

Wikiversity

On 31 December 2017, Lomax was blocked for a year for disrupting articles.[52] The same day, a bureaucrat extended his block to indefinite, after pointing out Abd has engaged in contentious activity by misusing the website as his "personal podium" spanning 7 years of long-term abuse:

Your long term activity at Wikiversity shows a persistent pattern of long term disruption that has been going on for the past SEVEN YEARS! This activity has also drawn a great deal of unwelcome contentious activity to our site that distracts the community from developing learning resources. The unblocks in your log show repeated attempts by our community to assume that you are making a good faith effort to improve Wikiversity despite much evidence to the contrary. I'm not going to get into the minutia of your individual actions. I'm going to make a call based on the sum of your contributions. Wikiversity is not your personal podium. Your participation here has become a drain on the resources of our community and we will not allow this to continue.[53]

Prior to his blocks, various editors on Wikiversity had complained about Abd's disruptive behaviour.[54] A Wikiversity bureaucrat noted "We have received numerous legitimate complaints about your activity over a long period of time."[55] Lomax has written thousands of words on his blog about his blocks, claiming only two were legitimate.[56]Do You Believe That?

CFC Wiki

Shortly after being banned on Wikiversity, he has created his own wiki, the CFC Wiki, for him to spout his own nonsense unfiltered. Editing is restricted only to verified new accounts for the time being and real name accounts are preferred so Abd can more easily dox and harass editors he disagrees with.

RationalWiki

Lomax was indefinitely blocked from RationalWiki in October 2017 for doxing and harassing users.[57] He now uses his personal blog to spread a paranoid conspiracy theory and misinformation campaign that the two brothers described above created and edited his article, for which there exists no technical evidence.[58] In January 2018, Lomax wrote he had been proven right about the two brothers writing his article, despite the fact one of the alleged brothers he has been harassing denies having anything to do with it; in other words, Lomax is dishonest. Nonetheless, the brothers conspiracy theory has spread, and is supported by numerous anti-semites, cranks and alt-righters such as Ben Steigmann, Michael Coombs, John Fuerst and Emil Kirkegaard — all of these people Lomax defends on his blog, most recently writing a lengthy post defending Kirkegaard's racialist pseudoscience.

In January 2014 Lomax described Rome Viharo as a "troll" and "opinionated self-important blowhard":

Rome Viharo is a troll, and the evidence of that is clear, here on RationalWiki and on this page. I might in some ways be sympathetic to his claims of pseudoskepticism on Wikipedia -- or here --, but I would not continually shove those claims in the face of users here on RationalWiki because it would simply be wasting everyone's time, i.e., it would be trolling. The most amazing aspect of this affair is the claim of Viharo that Sheldrake asked him to look at the Wikipedia article. Viharo was totally unskilled on Wikipedia, dead wrong about the policies and customs of the place, and acted in such a way as to alienate other users who might otherwise have been sympathetic. His reports of what happened on Wikipedia are full of inaccuracies. He was not, for example, "banned." He was blocked. His talk page access was revoked because he abused the access. Yes, he wasn't welcomed and was treated harshly. But what did he expect? He was confronting a phalanx of established editors, without paying the dues necessary to become a recognized member of the Wikipedia community. He was doing this alone, without finding a mentor who understood what would work and what would not work, and following the mentor's advice. In short, just another opinionated self-important blowhard.[59]

However, soon after Lomax was blocked in 2017, he did a 180-degrees turn and now considers Viharo as a useful ally against RationalWiki and praises him on his blog.[60] Lomax is willing to side with anyone in his harassment campaign against RationalWiki, even racists or people he has formally criticized. Basically if someone hates RationalWiki, Lomax will cite them approvingly on his blog.[citation NOT needed]

Amusingly, note also above how Lomax approvingly quotes the RationalWiki article on Rome Viharo before he was banned; after he was banned though, he complained the article is inaccurate despite the article was virtually unchanged to when he originally described it as factual (i.e. writing "the evidence of that is clear on RationalWiki").

Meta-Wiki

In February 2018 Lomax made fake sock-puppet investigation requests on Meta-Wiki, as a way to further harass the alleged brothers he is obsessed with. Admins, fed up with his shenanigans have dismissed the requests, writing "I see no edits at en-wv from any of these accounts that warrants CU, and consider this to be a frivolous and nuisance request" and told him to stop wasting their time.[61]

See also

External links

References

↑ 3.03.13.2Abd Profile "Born in 1944, Abd ul-Rahman is not my birth name, I accepted Islam in 1970. Not being willing to accept pale substitutes, I learned to read the Qur'an in Arabic by reading the Qur'an in Arabic."

↑Abd Blocked. (Archived). "Wikiversity is not your personal podium: persistent long term disruption."

↑Abd Profile at LessWrong. (http://archive.is/DQiBq Archived). "As to rational skepticism, I was known to Martin Gardner, who quoted a study of mine on the so-called Miracle of the Nineteen in the Qur'an, the work of Rashad Khalifa, whom I knew personally."

↑Cold fusion is real, claim scientists. "We have direct evidence that the effect is real and is nuclear in nature," US physicist Abdul-Rahman Lomax of the Infusion Institute in Massachusetts says in his report."

↑Friedlander, Michael W. (1998). At the Fringes of Science. Westview Press. p. 119. ISBN 0-8133-2200-6 "Parapsychology has failed to gain general scientific acceptance even for its improved methods and claimed successes, and it is still treated with a lopsided ambivalence among the scientific community. Most scientists write it off as pseudoscience unworthy of their time."

↑Pigliucci, Massimo; Boudry, Maarten. (2013). Philosophy of Pseudoscience: Reconsidering the Demarcation Problem. University Of Chicago Press p. 158. ISBN 978-0-226-05196-3 "Many observers refer to the field as a "pseudoscience". When mainstream scientists say that the field of parapsychology is not scientific, they mean that no satisfying naturalistic cause-and-effect explanation for these supposed effects has yet been proposed and that the field's experiments cannot be consistently replicated."

↑Proposed community ban of Abd from English Wikipedia. Wikipedia administrator comment: "Abd was topic banned from cold fusion-related articles by ArbCom for a year as a result of a pattern of disruptive editing… This topic ban is still in effect, and Abd has absolutely no intention of abiding by it. Abd was indefinitely blocked a few months ago and has since made numerous edits to Wikipedia in violation of that block and his topic ban."

↑Joshua Schroeder on pseudoscience on Wikipedia. Cold Fusion Community. "He has claimed to be supported (even paid) by a major skeptical organization, and he has referred to other users, and an organization called the Guerrilla Skeptics on Wikipedia. There may be some level of off-wiki collusion and coordination."